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This paper reviews the reasons why domestic dogs make good models to investigate cognitive processes related to social living and describes experimental approaches that can be adopted to investigate such processes in dogs. Domestic dogs are suitable models for investigating social cognition skills for three broad reasons. First, dogs originated from wolves, social animals that engage in a number of co-operative behaviours, such as hunting and that may have evolved cognitive abilities that help them predict and interpret the actions of other animals. Second, during domestication dogs are likely to have been selected for mental adaptations for their roles in human society such as herding or companionship. Third, domestic dogs live in a human world and "enculturation" may facilitate the development of relevant mental skills in dogs. Studies of social cognition in animals commonly use experimental paradigms originally developed for pre-verbal human infants. Preferential gaze, for example, can be used as a measure of attention or "surprise" in studies using expectancy violation. This approach has been used to demonstrate simple numerical competence in dogs. Dogs also readily use both conspecific and human social signals (e.g. looking or pointing) as information sources to locate hidden rewards such as food or favourite toys. Such abilities make dogs particularly good models for investigating perspective-taking tasks, where animals are required to discriminate between apparently knowledgeable and apparently ignorant informants.

Ability. --- Adaptation. --- Animal. --- Animals. --- Attention. --- Behaviour. --- Canis-familiaris. --- Canis. --- Cognition. --- Cognitive-ability. --- Conspecific. --- Development. --- Discriminate. --- Dog. --- Dogs. --- Domestic dog. --- Domestication. --- Food. --- Human infants. --- Human. --- Hunting. --- Infant. --- Model. --- Models. --- Paper. --- Review. --- Reward. --- Social. --- Task. --- Tasks. --- Toy. --- Wolf. --- Wolves.

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Human performance on diverse tests of intellect are impacted by a "general" regulatory factor that accounts for up to 50% of the variance between individuals on intelligence tests. Neurobiological determinants of general cognitive abilities are essentially unknown, owing in part to the paucity of animal research wherein neurobiological analyses are possible. We report a methodology with which we have assessed individual differences in the general learning abilities of laboratory mice. Abilities of mice on tests of associative fear conditioning, operant avoidance, path integration, discrimination, and spatial navigation were assessed. Tasks were designed so that each made unique sensory, motor, motivational, and information processing demands on the animals. A sample of 56 genetically diverse outbred mice (CD-1) was used to assess individuals' acquisition on each task. Indicative of a common source of variance, positive correlations were found between individuals' performance on all tasks. When tested on multiple test batteries, the overall performance ranks of individuals were found to be highly reliable and were "normally" distributed. Factor analysis of learning performance variables determined that a single factor accounted for 38% of the total variance across animals. Animals' levels of native activity and body weights accounted for little of the variability in learning, although animals' propensity for exploration loaded strongly ( and was positively correlated) with learning abilities. These results indicate that diverse learning abilities of laboratory mice are influenced by a common source of variance and, moreover, that the general learning abilities of individual mice can be specified relative to a sample of peers

Ability. --- Acquisition. --- Activity. --- Analysis. --- Animal. --- Animals. --- Avoidance. --- Body weight. --- Body-weight. --- Brain. --- Cognitive-ability. --- Conditioning. --- Demand. --- Discrimination. --- Enhancement. --- Exploration. --- Expression. --- Fear. --- Genetics. --- Human. --- Individual difference. --- Individual differences. --- Individual-differences. --- Intelligence,general intelligence,fluid intelligence,associative learning,memory,spatial learning,emotional learning,learning systems,genetic variation,behavioral phenotypes. --- Intelligence. --- Laboratory mice. --- Laboratory. --- Learning ability. --- Learning-ability. --- Learning. --- Level. --- Memory. --- Methodology. --- Mice. --- Navigation. --- Performance. --- Rank. --- Rat. --- Research. --- Sensory. --- Spatial. --- System. --- Task. --- Tasks. --- Test. --- Tests. --- Variability. --- Weight.